Parker Law Group joins complaint about Fort Jackson housing sewage that sickened 4-year-old boy

Parker Law Group is honored to join Bauer & Metro, P.C., a Bluffton law firm, in representing an Army family whose 4-year-old child was seriously sickened by backed-up sewage in the family’s quarters at Fort Jackson.

Rob Metro of Bauer & Metro is now being assisted by Ronnie Crosby and Derek Tarver of Parker Law in representing Army chaplain Travis Wilson and his wife, Jaclyn, who have sued Fort Jackson Housing LLC and Balfour Beatty Military Housing Management LLC in the U.S. District Court of South Carolina. The complaint, filed on Nov. 18, accuses the defendants of “negligent maintenance of upkeep of military housing,” including “sewage overflow and hazardous pollution.”

The Wilsons and their six children moved into base housing in South Carolina on Dec. 22, 2022. Not long after that, sewage in the upstairs bathroom overflowed. Jaclyn Wilson reported the problem to maintenance, but the problem was not effectively addressed. Sewage eventually leaked through the ceiling and into the kitchen below, causing a putrid smell throughout the home.

The family had to move into a hotel. When they returned, repair work was so incomplete that the toilet was still sitting in their bathtub and the sewer pipe was still exposed.

Then the couple noticed that their 4-year-old son, who often played on the house’s floors, had become lethargic. When his face began drooping, the couple became alarmed and took him to a local medical facility. They were informed that he was fighting a bacterial infection affecting his brain. He was immediately transferred to a hospital nearly 400 miles away in Birmingham. Doctors told his parents, “There is something showing in the scan, and you need to leave for Birmingham now.”

Eight neurologists evaluated the boy, and determined he was experiencing acute disseminated encephalitis, a rare inflammatory disease that attacks the brain and spinal cord. Symptoms include fever, fatigue, nausea, vomiting and sometimes seizures.

The child was still suffering symptoms at the time the lawsuit was filed.

This lawsuit isn’t the first time Balfour Beatty Communities has been accused of subpar military housing conditions. In 2021, the private company was ordered to pay over $65 million in fines and restitution for defrauding the U.S. military.

For more details, see this story in Army Times.